11419: Tricks Of The Trade.

Digiday published a story on the “agency tricks” allegedly used to boost revenue. An unnamed agency executive claimed, “One trick is to essentially double-charge the client for things where possible.” Really? Sorry, but clients are not that clueless about their billings. These days, it seems quite the opposite, with advertisers paying for a single agency employee to cover the work of multiple people. The funniest comment came from former Ogilvy CCO Lars Bastholm: “Sometimes at agencies, you can have 20 people in the room and not have any idea what 15 are doing.” In Bastholm’s case, anytime the man walked into a room of 20 people, at least 19 had no idea what he was bringing to the party. Of course, Digiday didn’t think to inquire at minority agencies, where the only tricks involve rolling over for a handful of crumbs.